The Arrival at Calvary
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Matthew 27:33
The passage
And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
Matthew 27:33
About this plate
A wide plate, and a wide, bare, rising ground. The procession comes in from the left — mounted soldiers, spears, a press of onlookers — and near the centre the cross is down on the ground with figures collapsed around it. The horizon is high and empty. There is no hill in the picture worth the name.
That flatness is deliberate and it is unusual. Calvary is drawn everywhere as a peak with three crosses on it. Doré gives you a slope, a crowd, and a great deal of dust, at the moment the party stops walking.
The verse is one line long and is mostly a translation note: And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull. The evangelist stops to explain the name.
Nothing has happened yet. The cross is on the ground, the soldiers are still mounted, and the crowd has not arranged itself. This is the moment of arrival at a work site, which is what the verse describes and what almost nobody draws.
Swipe left or right for the next plate